WHEN

Please note that this site is NOT maintained by Lars Pedersen, but a confidant.

Lars Pedersen was born in 1961; his father, Tor Pedersen, was a Norwegian musical composer. At an early age, Lars performed with his father, brother and two older sisters, being often compared to The Partridge Family. Lars made his first apperance on a record when he was 11 years old, and met Chuck Berry and other stars.
In the late 1970's Lars played in the first Norwegian punk band Hærverk, and would later – as the 80's came – go on to form the band The Last James. The Last James explored The Beatles/Beach Boys sound, releasing three albums, Grape, The Last James and Kindergarten. During the 1980's and early 90's, Pedersen was also a member of the seminal industrial/new wave group Holy Toy, fronted by Andrej D. Nebb. Holy Toy put out severeal stand-out albums such as Panzer and Rabbitz, Why Not in Choir? and Pakt of Fakt.
Over the years Lars has also composed music for several productions by the Norwegian avant-garde ensemble The Theatre of Cruelty, firmly rooted in the visions of the French surrealist poet Antonin Artaud.
In 1983 Pedersen launched the one-man project Hospital Blimp, which would later become When. The debut album Drowning but Learning was released in 1987, with When's trademark cut-up/collage technique already apparent.
In 1988 When released Death in the Blue Lake, inspired by Norwegian author André Bjerke's psychological horror novel of the same name. The album had a strong atmosphere of fear and mourning, and was quite popular in Norwegian black metal circles. People like the late Euronymous (Mayhem) as well as his murderer Varg Vikernes (Burzum) often referenced When in the early nineties. Satyricon even used an excerpt from the album's A-side as intro to their Dark Medieval Times album. The B-side of the album is an amalgamation of ethnic music, blues harmonica, coughing, psychedelic pop and glissandi effects. Today it is almost impossible to track down a copy of the LP.
Black, White & Grey, When's third album, conjured up images of war and urban decay. Chris Cutler of legendary R.I.O. initiators Henry Cow, and collaborator with The Residents among others, was also a central inspiration and contributed to the album. Black, White & Grey was released ..ler's RéR Megacorp. in 1991.
1992 saw the release of Svartedauen (Norwegian for "The Black Death"), a 38-minute musical description of the ravages of the bubonic plague in Norway around 1349. The album borrows elements from Norwegian folk music, and features a host of disturbing sounds: hearses, moans of the dying, rats, flagellant's whips and a scythe being sharpened, to name but a few. It is, perhaps along with Univers Zero's Heresie, one of the scariest albums ever to have been released.
On 94's Prefab Wreckage, When slowly started moving from the more abstract soundtracks of the earlier albums and towards a more song-oriented sound. The album had a nightmarish bent, featuring a chamber music ensemble and recurring clockwork motifs. The inner sleeve is a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, one of the album's inspirations.
In 1997 When released Gynt, which according to the liner notes is a "satiric play on Edward Grieg's Peer Gynt. Inspired by Henrik Ibsen." As Pedersen says: "I tried to put irony into the music. There is a lot of humour in When's music, it's not bloody serious all the time."
After Gynt, When was signed by Jester Records, newly set up by Kristoffer Rygg of Ulver fame, and the next album would mark another radical change in When's musical direction. 1998's Psychedelic Wunderbaum was – as the title suggests – a psychedelic mix, with apparent inspirations from rock, noise and cartoon music, and with lyrics taken from Aleister Crowley and Tom Wolfe. Pedersen remarked: "I fetched many grooves from old, obscure psychedelic garage bands. It was something I had wanted to do for a long time, but I thought that it might be too audacious. But as more and more artists seem to be using that method, I figured that I could do it too. I dug up the old Farfisa organ that I had used in Holy Toy and got Bjørn Sorknes, the old Holy Toy guitarist, with me. We worked together on the production as well. It became a sort of crossing between industrial and psychedelic rock."
The next album, The Lobster Boys, was Pedersen's most pop-oriented effort till then. Many of the songs were reminiscent of The Beatles and The Beach Boys, but there's usually something a little 'off' and/or odd about When's music that sets it apart from its more mainstream pendants. Some tracks start out as 'normal' rock, but often end up in a cacophonic concoction of strange samples, effects and harmonious combinations. The Lobster Boys was also heavily inspired by Arabic music. Nils Arne Øvergård and Øyvind Borgemoen joined When as full members on this recording. The trio has played several concerts, including the release party for the single "Sunshine Superhead", where they performed in bear costumes with paper-mâché guitars. Said song also got heavy radio rotation in Norway in the summer of '92.
In 2003 When released Pearl-Harvest, more or less The Lobster Boys pt. II, but with lyrical concepts taken from The Arabian Nights. Combine those fables with sampled, shambling Middle Eastern bazaar muzak, jangling exotica and electronics, and you've got When's winning formula. The album earned a nomination in the Open Class category of Spellemannprisen, the Norwegian equivalent to the Grammy Awards.
When's 2004 album, Whenever, features a characteristic mix of Bollywood influences and trance inducing African tribal rhythms, as well as the trademark When sound collages. The lyrics, written by Chris Cutler, often deal with grim subject matter such as the apocalypse and death.
In 2007 came the meticulous Trippy Happy. A long time in the making, the album received rave reviews in Norwegian press, bringing back a sound that hadn't been heard since the first psychedelic era 1965–1968. The album explored folk à la Donovan, combining banjo lullabies with the fuller-bodied sound of baroque pop, the rawness of early garage rock as well as the cartoon music pioneered by Raymond Scott. Impeccably implemented into the surreal world of Lars Pedersen's When.
On April 28, 2008, Jester Records in co-operation with Plastic Head Music Distribution are proud to present When's twelfth (!) album, You Are Silent. Likely to be delightful news to the black-clads, this one is considerably darker, more "chamberish", and perhaps more analogous to albums such as Prefab Wreckage than recent releases. Recorded and co-produced by Tore Ylwizaker of Ulver, the range of sound, influence and atmosphere is startling.
You have never heard anything like it.